Morbid: The Lords of Ire

Poor animation , could be a good game but hell no

*This review was machine translated from Korean to English. Morbid: The Lords of Ire Not Old School—Just Outdated 🚩 A Checkpoint Too Far To put it bluntly, the checkpoint placement in this game is a joke. The real issue is the malice in how they are deployed. Right before you can finally reach a breather, the game hits you with a brutal, soul-crushing encounter that acts as a literal gatekeeper. We're talking completely toxic setups: a chaotic mix of ranged and melee enemies, a large horde backing a high-tier elite, or straight-up throwing two heavy brutes into a tight space together. And the worst part? You can forget about stealth-backstabbing your way through or just sprinting past them to hit the checkpoint. The game deliberately blocks your path and forces you into a locked combat arena. It feels like a cheap, artificial way to inflate the playtime, forcing you into a tedious run-back every single time you die. 🌑 Let There Be No Light The game features a Sanity mechanic where high or low levels grant specific buffs and penalties. The problem starts when your Sanity drops into the "Madness" state. To show this mental deterioration, the environment warps into a grotesque landscape covered in tentacles and vines, somewhat reminiscent of the Umbral realm in Lords of the Fallen. Look, I get the artistic vision. But the execution is a disaster. The screen becomes so dark that it is difficult to navigate the terrain, see objects, or spot enemies. It completely obliterates gameplay readability. No matter how hard you want to sell the "insanity atmosphere", you should never compromise basic visibility to this extent. It gets so unplayably bad that, given how absurdly far apart the checkpoints are, it is honestly better for both your own mental health and the character's to just give up and choose death. Which is ridiculous, because "giving up" is simply not in a Soulslike player's DNA. That is how terrible it really is. ⚔️ Combat: Nothing Beyond the Basics Despite the glaring design flaws mentioned above, I have to give credit to the actual combat. A lot of reviews complain that the controls feel clunky, but I honestly didn't experience that at all. Dodging, parrying, and blocking are incredibly snappy—they register the instant you press the button without any frustrating input lag. Maybe it's just because my muscle memory has been beaten into submission by years of quietly enduring and adapting to old-school Soulslikes like Dark Souls III. I guess I’m just hardwired to adapt to this kind of weight, but to me, the controls felt fine. Furthermore, the enemy attack patterns are remarkably honest. Sure, they’ll throw in a clever mix-up to catch you off guard, but it never feels cheap; it’s fair and reasonable. Once you learn their movesets—which is relatively straightforward—landing a perfect parry delivers incredibly crisp, punchy, and satisfying feedback. The visual feedback is also excellent, with blood splattering everywhere during combat, adding a real sense of weight and impact to every strike. However, it never goes beyond the basics. It's a total one-trick pony centered entirely around parrying and riposte. Because basic attacks deal very little damage, they lose much of their purpose, and without unique weapon skills, the distinct identity of each weapon type becomes quite blurred. As a result, combat naturally boils down to a simple loop of basic attacks, dodging, parrying, and landing ripostes. Personally, I actually prefer this; I dislike convoluted mechanics, and this stripped-back style stays true to core Soulslike fundamentals. 👢 Congratulations. Now Piss Off The finale is an absolute masterclass in comedy. I finally brought down the final boss, and the exact millisecond I landed the finishing blow? No death animation. No epic epilogue. The game straight-up slapped the credits onto my screen. Zero room to breathe, zero narrative payoff—just immediate staff credits. As soon as my brain processed the situation, I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably at the sheer absurdity of it. It felt like the developers were so desperate to get me out of their game that they literally kicked me to the curb the moment the boss health bar hit zero. Now that's anticlimactic. ⚖️ The Verdict The game feels outdated. Between its overly simple design, easy difficulty, and many serious flaws, it is difficult to recommend outright. You should only consider this game if you can overlook visuals that already felt a decade out of date at launch. Otherwise, skip it without a second thought. The tactile feedback of parrying is good. However, because there are no weapon skills or magic, the combat relies entirely on dodging, attacking, parrying, and riposting. While I personally see this stripped-back style as the core essence of a Soulslike, it can easily feel monotonous to many. One thing is absolutely certain: even at 75% off, this game is still overpriced. "So, in conclusion, if you love parrying and don't mind the old-school jank, you might—[CREDITS ROLL INTENSIFIES]"

The game just does not feel good to play. Movement feels simultaneously floaty and clunky, same with the combat. Your stats seem to matter little (like Impact; use a weapon with at 80, versus at weapon with 160+, and proceed to not notice a single difference). Enemies will enter hyper-armour modes seemingly at random, where you cannot stagger them unless you heavy attack. The game loves to lock you into small arenas with multiple big guys with large reach and arcs, and sometimes archers on top of this. There is also no telling you're entering into a forced arena either; sometimes you'll encounter multiple tough enemies and its normal, other times you'll encounter multiple tough enemies, and suddenly walls of blood will spring up out of nowhere and trap you in a small segment of the map. The two dodges feel woefully inadequate for anything tougher than the weakest enemies. A great reliance on parrying, which is a problem with the aforementioned forced arenas. Throw in a basic stealthing system where you sneak up on enemies to deal big backstab damage, but make almost all of those actually be gotcha-moments, where it turned out there was someone else hidden who alerts everyone, but also killing the alerter also alerts the enemies for a lose-lose on stealth opportunities. The game relies on a socket gem system, where you socket runes with static statistical upgrades (no fun passives or anything), and you consume those finite runes into a weapon to upgrade it, permanently losing those runes. This game also annoys with its lose-on-death mechanic. Instead of running back and picking up your currency, you keep your currency. And instead lose your currency multiplier, that you will have to tediously build up again (or ignore and be underpowered), just to maintain the intended level of currency gain. But then add in cheap deaths (e.g., the forced arenas) for an exercise in frustration.

It's so incredible bland and uninspired and relies almost a 100% on parry and 'stance'-bar criticals, otherwise you deal barely any damage.

你他妈的，整个那个血墙，以前碰到那种堆怪打不过还可以马拉松不打，你倒好，把我塞到一个牢房里面，前面一个背后一个把我轮了。

O jogo me divertiu, apesar dos diversos problemas associados a ele, vou dar positivo e uma nota de 1,5 de 5,0 estrelas. 1. Mecânicas 1,0: um pouco travadas e com diversos bugs de cenário, mas as mecânicas com as gemas das armas é bem divertido de ficar montando estratégias. 2. Narrativa 0,0: A história parece ser boa, mas é fraca, sem muita possibilidade de exploração da lore 3. Gráfico 0,5: a ambientação meio lovecraft é bem legal e interessante, mas parece que o jogo tem muitos bugs visuais 4. Performance 0,0: o jogo é bem bugado quando fica com uns 4 inimigos no mesmo lugar e isso pq tenho um pc muito bom. 5. Replay 0,0: não me deu a menor vontade de jogar novamente esse jogo

А помните как выглядела первая часть? Поменяли более менее стилёвый 2д дизайн на безвкусное 3д из упаковки анрила. Анимации достаточно топорные, прокачка вообще такая себе, боёвка заточена на парирование, что я могу считать плюсом, но игру это не спасает. Чистый проходняк на вечер, если не выбивать 100% достижений. Средней оценки нет, но оставлю положительную, надеюсь, что следующую игру они не испортят.